48 cizing the preparations of the Bosnian- government Army for the spring offen- sive. Some chirpy conscripts were seen huddled together in a mountain bunker, cleaning their weapons, discussing tac- tics, and laughing about their slow- thinlung opponents. Cut to a young conscript surrounded by a halo of Vase- line on the lens: in slow motion, he fired his handheld rocket launcher be- fore turning to the camera with an or- gasmic smile on his face and punch- ing the air with his fist in a mock vic- tory celebration (Had it been the Serbs who were openly boasting about offen- sives under preparation, the massed ranks of the international media would be crying foul. But the re- sponse is muted when the Bosnian government trashes its solemn commitments to the international community.) Then, on March 20th, the Muslims attacked Mt. Vlasié and the Majevica range. The latter juts out east of T uzla, the second-largest city con- trolled by the Muslims. From Stolice, one of Majevica's peaks and the sIte of a television relay station, you can see the Drina River periodically widen into picturesque little lakes as it stretches southward. You can also see the towns of Zvornik, Bratunac, and Vlasenica. In the spring of 1992, all three cities had Muslim majorities. Then, after the international commu- nity so rasWy recognized the parastate of Bosnia-Herzegovina, which had no hope of surviving, the three cities became the targets of the longest-sustained and most hideous crimes perpetrated in the former Yugoslavia. From the relative safety of Sarajevo, Muslim leaders de- clared the independence of a state that they had no means of defending. These politicians had their international recog- nition and the accompanying pomp, but their necks were not on the line. It was their fellow-Muslims in eastern Bosnia who had to pay the price. After reaching the safety of Zagreb, the Croatian capital, a worker from Bratunac named Ekrem Avdié told me of his ordeal: "On Sunday, May 10, 1992, there was shooting from all direc- tIons around Bratunac. Our Serb neigh- bors had occupied half the town. . . . They beat the baker, Fejzo Raskalj, endlessly. They killed him on Tuesday, May 12th, and then they brought his brother to show him how they had killed Fejzo and how they would kill him in the same way. I know that among tþe guards were my neighbors, Bubo Zivanovié and Nikola, a waiter. They cursed our Turkish Muslim mothers and Alija"-Izetbegovié. "On Monday, May 11 th, they started to call our names, which they had on some lists. They picked out Izet Ahmic, the head of the M.B.O."-Muslim Bosniak Or- ganization-"Safet Delié, and Hasan lbrahimovié. They beat the three of them, forcing them to carry the dead into the back of a station wagon and to clean the floor of blood. New prisoners were being brought in the whole time. On Wednesday, they killed Izet and Hasan. Safet saved himself by hid- ing in the crowd. They brought in Medo Delic, my colleague, and his two sons. The younger son suffered from epilepsy. They started to hit them immediately, saying, What have you been doing un- til now?' Medo begged them not to hit his younger son, because of his illness. Bane"-one of the local Serbs-"imme- diately shot the younger son in the head and said, 'He's not going to be ill any- more!' Then he killed the older son and Medo. During the three nights that we were in the room, they killed several hundred people. Those who had been beaten up were taken out, thrown into a dumpster, and burned alive. They then placed the dumpster under our window. The bodies were transported by van and lorry and then thrown into h D . " t e rina. On the far bank of the Drina lies Serbia. Once the international commu- nity had approved the detaching of Bosnia from Yugoslavia, the Muslims of the Drina valley were finished Neither the Serbs of Bosnia nor those of Serbia will consider giving up this strategically vital strip of land. T HE other great regional parastate, the so-called Serb Republic, has its capital less than a dozen miles from Sarajevo, in the meadowy suburb of Pale. Before the war, Pale was a village ski resort with six or seven thousand permanent residents-Serbs and Mus- lims. Now, three years later, lt has ex- THE NEW YORKER, MAY 8, 1995 panded into a town of an estimated fourteen thousand-all Serbs. Today, there are no guests-just redundant hosts. Pale is a beautiful but perma- nently out-of-season tourist center Si- lent teen-agers drift listlessly around the few cafés, playing pool until the estab- lishments close, in the early evening. Women and old men occupy them- selves perfunctorily with the Bosnian Serbs' central economic activity: selling cigarettes by the side of the road. These years of indolence in Pale have been ac- companIed by some of the fiercest fight- ing in the war-in Sarajevo. Yet Pale is going stir-crazy with boredom and isolation. The only excitement is in the House of Culture, a little shoebox on the main drag which is home to Serbian televi- sion-a powerful branch on the other- wise sickly tree of Bosnian Serb propa- ganda. This particular evening--April 7, 1995-panic has seized the over- wrought technicians and journalists stuffed tightly in the building. It is barely three weeks since Mt. VlaSié and the Majevica range came under fe- rocious attack by the armed forces of the Bosnian government. Both are sites of television relay stations. With ten minutes to go before the main evening news, the television and telephone lines to Banja Luka, the Bosnian Serbs' principle city in the north, are down. The face of Dragan BüZanié, the pre- senter cum producer cum editor, is grim. Like CNN, Serbian television uses a spht screen-one anchorman in Pale, another in Banja Luka. 'We can't go on the air without the split screen," Bozanié says. Serbian viewers would Immediately assume that one or both of the relay stations had been taken by the Bosnian government-and the Serbs are not accustomed to the dam- aging psychological impact of military defeat. Although the Bosnian Serb Army has inflicted a senous defeat on the Mus- lim forces at Majevica, the relay station on Vlasié has fallen to the Muslims, and the Serbs have not yet admitted this. With two minutes to go, the Ser- bian television workers are the grateful recipients of a miracle: thanks to the Majevica relay, the lines come back up. The news this evening leads off with the first of regular monthly press con- ferences to be held by Dr. Karadzié, the